Realm of Ruins

by Hannah West

The halls that seemed so cramped between lectures now yawned, labyrinths of infinite shadow. Had I possessed an elicrin stone, I could have lit the darkness with an easy enchantment or whispered the lanterns aflame. But I was forced to feel my way along the smooth walls, listening to the distant laughter of the guards who stalked the academy halls at night. The sloshing of wineskins explained the ease with which Ivria had snuck inside.

  The deeper I wandered, the more keenly I sensed an ominous presence.

  A streak of white swept past me with a whoosh of soft air. I gasped, fancying a cloaked intruder in our midst, footfalls trained and silent—even though logic insisted it was only Professor Strather’s white cat, known to roam the halls. A shiver scuttled between my shoulders, but it was only my imagination.

  Yet the pull of ancient magic thrumming around me was real, and grew stronger when I found a certain door ajar, one that nearly always remained locked.

  It was the room that held the portal to the Water.

  Once, the Water had been difficult to reach, moving around the Forest of the West Fringe, cloaking itself, a capricious force of nature. But King Tiernan, a Portimacian, had erected a doorway spanning the distance and uncertainty. Now, mortals and pupils need not travel across the kingdom to hold an elicrin rite of passage. One could take a single step through the portal and arrive at the Water’s edge. I’d passed through for Ander’s ceremony just last year.

  But there was a drawback to the convenience, which I’d never before pondered: immense danger lurked mere steps away.

  The door creaked as if to contest as I pushed it fully open and cast a timorous glance inside. The circular chamber held no windows, yet muted moonlight spilled through the shadows. It came from the archway across from me, which led to a dense forest swathed in snow.

  Ivria stood at the threshold of the portal, her graceful hands clinging to the frame. The shrill squeak of the door had announced my entrance, but she didn’t acknowledge me.

  “Ivria,” I said. Her name left my lips a nervous melody.

  She turned, exposing her delicate profile.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “I don’t want them to see,” she whispered.

  “See what?”

  She faced the portal again. Trepidation tingled through my limbs.

  “You’re missing my party,” I said, hoping my insouciant tone would somehow reel her back to me.

  “You don’t care about the party,” she said quietly. A stinging wind from the other side stirred the hem of her gown.

  “I care about you being there.”

  “You can be at my party,” Ivria said. “You can be the only one.”

  She took a deep breath. I lunged to grab her by the waist, but she had already stepped through the portal. The silk laces of her bodice slithered through my fingers.

  I stepped through after her.

  The sensations hit me in swift succession: cold beneath my feet, cold flurrying around me and landing on my eyelashes and hair, cold intimately caressing the skin exposed by my gown. The fragile smell of fresh snow brought back piercing memories of the months I’d spent wandering in the wilderness alongside my father, with only worn furs and shuddering flames to keep warm. He had spirited me away from my royal relatives, hoping I could live a life like his.

  A pure white shroud covered the clearing and the surrounding woods. Several of these trees had once entwined to form a gate meant to keep out the unworthy, but the Conclave had done away with that. They were the ones who decided who reached the Water. Any fool willing to take her chances without their say-so deserved her fate.

  My cousin traipsed, barefooted, to the shore of the black pond. She lined up her toes against the edge and let the icy wind toy with her hair, obscuring her features.

  “Ivria,” I whispered, softer than before. This place was both menacing and marked by ethereal beauty. I had only ever come here with a crowd of people in the daytime. But in the dark, it felt as if a mere sigh would echo for days and shake the snow from shadows best left undisturbed. “You don’t have to do this. You’re nervous. You’re frightened. You’re clearly not prepared for this.”

  “Will I ever be?” she asked.

  “You don’t have to be. No one said you have to do this.”

  “But I do. Or I will grow old while everyone stays the same. I’ll shame our family.”

  Each word pierced my heart. I hadn’t known Ivria harbored the same fears as I.

  I took a step closer. The snow stung the tender pads of my feet. “Then do it properly,” I answered. “You’ve received permission from the Conclave. Ander will want to be there, and Uncle Prosper and Aunt Sylvana. Grandmother Odessa will mount your head in the receiving hall if you don’t invite her.”

  “I don’t want them to see,” she repeated.

  “See what?”

  Her lucid gray eyes met mine. My heart dove to my gut.

  She didn’t want them to see her die.

  VRIA, you’re not going to die,” I said, chancing another step toward the magnificent presence looming before us.

  “You know my gift,” she said, facing the Water again. “I sense danger.”

  “Sensing danger and sensing death are not the same.”

  “I knew your father was going to die. No word from Leonar Braiosa for over a year as he rambled through the Brazor Mountains, and yet I knew the exact moment.”

  The cold felt like knife tips, though perhaps it was the pain I’d trained myself to tuck away like a broken, precious figurine.

  “Let’s go home, Ivria,” I said, glancing at the dark archway behind us. Soon we could be warming before a crackling fire, explaining ourselves to relatives who would scold me for absconding from my own celebration. “Please?”

  Ivria’s pale features softened as she turned to me, eyes like twin moons in the night. I held out my hand to her.

  But instead of stepping closer to grasp it, she extended her leg and pointed her toes, soaking the hem of her gown. Before I could even flinch, she skimmed along the surface of the Water, creating a tiny ripple.

  A gasp tore out of my lips, jarring against the otherworldly silence.

  After a few dreadful beats, an unseen force from below seized Ivria by the ankle and dragged her into the depths of the Water, as merciless as a predator swallowing prey.

  I shrieked and raced to the edge, my impulse to go after her warring with my knowledge of the Water and its ways. At first, the Water treated its chosen ones the same as the ones it would destroy: it pulled them under and trapped them beneath a solid sheet of ice.

  Wait. See.

  The ice began to form at the outer edges of the pond. Just as it had for Ander, it would emit a thousand glittering colors, then burst into a thousand shards. One of them would be an elicrin stone, which Ivria would retrieve and wear at her sternum all her long days like a prized royal jewel. A constellation of spells and enchantments would supplement her innate gift. She would be powerful, beautiful, unstoppable, a force of good in the world.

  Wait. See.

  Ivria was an Augurer, and only a fool would refuse to heed her warnings about impending danger. But her acute gift was exactly why she deserved to be an elicromancer in the first place. It was the reason she had received permission to try. It was the reason she wouldn’t die.

  Wait…

  An unwelcome irony impaled my reasoning: If Ivria’s spirit was attuned to imminent danger and, apparently, tragedy, then her belief concerning her own fate could be trusted. She would die. And if her intuition could not be trusted, then perhaps she did not deserve the Conclave’s approval—which also meant she could die.

  As the sheet of ice crept over the surface, hemming Ivria underneath, her last look of resignation haunted me.

  I shot across the glistening barrier toward the black liquid center. My stockings offered little traction or protection from the blistering cold. I slipped and fell but managed to launch myself toward the shrinking aperture, sliding on my kne
es and skidding to a stop nearly within arm’s reach of it.

  A pale hand shot out of the Water, grappling with the slick ice. I lunged for it, flattening my body against the surface and stretching to clasp Ivria’s shivering fingers, but the tips of mine barely touched hers before hers slipped away.

  I scrambled closer. My arm shot into the freezing Water of its own volition to numbly grope for a limb or a handful of thick hair.

  I latched on to a thin wrist, but the relief was ephemeral. The ice was still closing in.

  “Ivria!” I screamed, pounding my free hand on the rock-solid barrier. But I knew, as I had always known, that the only force capable of breaking it was the elicrin power of the one trapped beneath the surface.

  The ice closed around my forearm, clamping down. I cried out in pain but kept a desperate grip on Ivria.

  Hold on, hold on, I commanded, but I knew that if I held on, this unforgiving force of nature would break my bones. I would freeze and die alone.

  And whether I held on or not, Ivria was utterly at the Water’s mercy.

  I released her and yanked my arm out of the Water, hoping for the best. In the midst of the pounding suspense, an oblique realization struck me: I had touched the Water.

  A bright light burgeoned at the center of the ice. I laid my hands flat on the surface as the light spread, seeping out around me. Was it for Ivria or for me? Which of us would prove worthy to receive an elicrin stone—and in so doing, survive?

  Was it possible that both of us would?

  A loud crack made me jump to my feet and whip around. A small fracture began to crawl through the ice behind me, growing and forking out like the roots of an ancient tree. The lines slithered and spread until they surrounded me and the only patch of solid ice resided just beneath my feet.

  The cracks built to a loud rumble, barreling through the quiet night. I could feel the Water roiling and churning, its energy palpable, restless. I braced myself just in time.

  Finally, the Water erupted around me like an inverted waterfall deluging into the black sky. My pedestal was a tiny vessel in its midst, and yet the Water did not toss me to and fro. As the deafening waves surged upward around me, my island held steady.

  After what seemed an age, silence descended again, soft as a dove’s wing. I inhaled deeply. The winter air burned my lungs, but it served to remind me that I was alive.

  My eyes roved over the landscape. It had changed.

  There was no Water.

  All around my island lay smooth, black rock gleaming in the moonlight.

  Survivors of the Water had explained what it was like under the surface. There should have been weeds and dirt, terrain one might find at the bottom of an ordinary lake. But there was only bald rock mirroring the lucent stars.

  I didn’t have long to take in the sight. A dense, sparkling fog drifted down and settled over the world like a fleece blanket. It wandered over my skin and sank into my pores. I sucked in a breath and watched the fog wind and coil its way toward my mouth.

  As I absorbed it, I felt a deep, dormant part of me come alive with warmth, with light, with…power. It was as though the sky had soaked up the Water’s magic and wrung it out for me in a soft mist.

  For so long, I’d waited for my power to manifest, to strike something inside me like flint and steel. Now sparks flared within my spirit.

  This was what magic felt like.

  But ice snaked through my veins at the sight of Ivria lying motionless on the black rock, the silken folds of her dress sprawling like the petals of a crushed violet.

  In the cold silence, the merciless truth struck me. I opened my mouth to scream her name, but no sound transpired. The pain tightened like a rope around my throat.

  I climbed down from the slick block of ice, clambering over the sloping landscape to collect her in my arms. I pressed the cold fingers of each of her hands open, looking for an elicrin stone. One of the broken ice shards was supposed to be an elicrin stone in her grasp. She was meant to be an elicromancer.

  Mashing my ear to her chest, I listened for a rhythm. But I could hear only my own blood pounding in my head.

  “Ivria,” I said, turning her face to me. Her black eyelashes fanned out around once-bright eyes. Beneath the rouge, her lips were bluish. I could feel the warmth leaving her cheeks with each fleeting moment.

  Ivria had always shielded me and cared for me. When my mother had stopped dabbing away my tears, when she had stopped tucking me in to sleep, Ivria had not. But this time she’d needed me. And I couldn’t save her.

  I touched my forehead to hers. Hot tears welled over and slipped onto her skin. “What happened?” I whispered. “You were meant for this.” A sob ripped out of my chest. I tore my gaze from her face and looked at the tranquil wood. “What happened?”

  My hoarse refrain roared out from the clearing, shaking the boughs of the trees. Their branches and trunks twisted in on themselves and withered. The foliage on the evergreens drooped low, faded to brown, and drifted to the covering of fresh snow. I stared, aghast.

  “Valory?”

  Ander’s call brought comfort and despair in equal measure. As long as I clung to Ivria, as long as it was just the two of us, I resided in my own universe of agony. Now I would have to invite others into this secret place, to expose and confront my wounds, to explain that I had touched the Water and survived without an elicrin stone.

  I felt the warmth of Ander beside me. Gently, he peeled my hands away from his sister’s corpse and went through familiar motions: searching for an elicrin stone, listening for a faint heartbeat. As he wept, he pleaded with her to come back.

  Soon other figures became visible in the starlight. Some of them hesitated before stepping onto the rocky wasteland where the Water had once lain. One of them tossed a cloak around my shoulders and helped me stand.

  As steady hands guided me back through the portal, I cast a final look over my shoulder at Ivria. The sugary sound of her laugh tiptoed into my mind. I imagined capturing it and stowing it away in a snug, safe corner of my memories, where it would burrow deep, unthreatened by the passage of time.

  For I could live a very long life.

  * * *

  Within the instant it took to return to the academy from the snowy woods, I was swept up in another dance. A partner with blurry features led me down the corridor and passed me off to another, and another. Each moved with more urgency than the last. My abandoned silver slippers were nothing but a whirling streak on the bloodred carpet in the palace.

  I survived. But I don’t have an elicrin stone. What happened?

  Back in my bedchamber, the dance continued, coinciding with the rhythm of my hammering heart. I raised my arms so Ellen could trade my wet gown for a nightdress, stepped out of my stockings one foot at a time, and plunked down in a chair by the hearth. Someone asked me a question, but, like a shadow in the corner of my eye, I couldn’t quite catch it.

  “Matara liss,” my mother hissed, lighting the fire with words in the old tongue. As the warmth thawed my fingers and toes, I overheard her and Victor’s whispered speculations.

  “What happened?” my mother asked.

  “One or both of them defied the tenets.”

  “Is she an elicromancer? I don’t see an elicrin stone.”

  “Ask her yourself.”

  “She’s stunned.” My mother’s hands fluttered nervously before landing at her temples. “We’ll wait until she comes back to herself.”

  Servants brushed by me, stoking the fire and keeping their heads down. Ellen pitched a blanket over me and tucked in the hem with meticulous concern. Before she bustled away, the older woman looked on me with crinkled eyes and peeled a lock of damp hair from my cheek, tucking it back into my plait.

  I felt a warm, hairy snout press into my palm and found Calanthe on the floor at my side. A soft whimper in her throat cut through the commotion of servants brushing in and out. The deerhound’s ocher eyes moored my spirit.

  “Valory.” My mot
her’s voice drew my gaze upward. King Tiernan stood in my doorway.

  “Your Majesty,” I croaked, standing to draw a curtsy.

  His black brows dipped over eyes gleaming with questions. “A private word, please.”

  The gentle request sent servants and nobles alike scurrying from the room. My mother lingered, crushing her lips together until they lost color. “Uncle Tiernan—” she started, but he turned his stern features on her. With a rueful look, she darted out like the rest.

  As she shut the door behind her, a last lone shiver traced its way up my back.

  “Please, sit,” the King of Calgoran said.

  I stumbled back and sank onto the soft bed. Calanthe curled up at my feet, impervious to the commands of rulers.

  Tiernan gripped the high back of the chair and slid it away from the fire before settling in across from me. I fixed my eyes on the maroon brocade velvet of his doublet, the same one he had worn at my party. Not even an hour could have passed since I’d fled the great hall in pursuit of Ivria. Had rumors of her fate already perforated the revelry?

  He swept back a wayward dark wave and leaned forward. “What happened?” he asked calmly.

  I expected to choke on the explanation, to sob uncontrollably, but the words flowed as freely as my tears. “Ivria snuck away from the feast to go to the Water. She believed it would kill her and she didn’t want it to happen at her ceremony, in front of everyone. I followed her. I tried to stop her. And then something happened and the Water just…was gone.”

  “Is she the only one who touched it?”

  “No. I tried to pull her out before the ice closed in.”

  He nodded slowly. “But she touched it of her own volition?”

  A wave of indignation tore my gaze from the gold cross-stitching on his collar. I looked straight into his eyes, but they harbored no accusation. I didn’t know much about the man behind the crown, yet his reputation was that of an impartial ruler. His blue elicrin stone, set in a gold medallion casing of twisted vines, seemed to reflect its wearer’s cool temper.

  “Yes, she touched it of her own volition.” I cleared my throat. I could not, would not, dissolve into a helpless puddle until he was gone.